PARENTS, READ TO YOUR CHILDREN AND VICE VERSA

The most elegant, long-ago piece of furniture we had was the combination bookcase and desk. On one side were the bookshelves behind a long, glass door, outward curved and wood framed, complete with keyhole and key. On the right side, about half way down was an inward slanting door that could be dropped down to form a writing board. Behind this writing-board door, also with keyhole and key, was a number of interesting little pigeon~holes of varying sizes. Below the slanting door were more open shelves for books.

It was the books behind that glass door that were of interest to me, although the curved glass and the keys and keyholes were always a marvel. There were no other keys around except those with which~~ to wind the clocks.

To a perceptive adult reader, the little collection of books would have seemed odd, maybe even comical. There was "The San Francisco Earthquake," "The Great Chicago Theater Disaster," a gloomy volume entitled "Night Scenes from the Bible" with endpapers bl~ac~k as soot, agriculture books, "Romola," two Waverly Novels with gold thistles on their green covers, a softly padded black leather volume of Longfellow's poems, the "Poems and Dramas of Lord Byron," an old Missouri Blue Book and Douglass' "History of Southeast Missouri."

This must have been the original collection that was brought to the farm. How did that curved glass door ever make it intact, in the bed of the wagon, over those rocky hillsides and rocky-bottomed river?

In the San Francisco and Chicago disaster books there were many pictures of those who lost their lives. Their names and ages were given. Lou and I seemed morbidly interested and could, eventually, recite the names of everyone pictured without benefit of looking at the caption. We affectionately shortened their names. A little blond Rebecca became Becky to us. A distinguished looking Peter became Pete.

As we girls grew, a few more books began to be added, mostly gifts. There was the Five Little Peppers series, "The Girl of the Limberlost," "Georgina of the Rainbow" and "Little Boy Blue." This latter was mine and was not only the verses about imploring the little boy to come blow his horn but an extended story about the young lad. The book had a blue hardback cover and the indented title was in black. The black eventually wore off from my tracing the lettering wit~h my finger. Before I knew an A from a B or the words cow from horn, Mama, Lillian, Lou, anyone I could babyishly beg, read this slender book to me, over and over and over.

The book mysteriously disappeared! But it was too late for any relief its disappearance may have afforded. I had, unknowingly, learned it by heart, could read it exactly and did so, over and over and over without it being in my hands, could even turn the absent pages at the right word. So I knew what the words, boy, blue, horn, meadow, cow, little, etc. etc. looked like and could identify them on sight long before I started to school.

However, when I started to school, the word, little, was introduced to me in a box at the top of the new lesson page as lit-tle, with a mysterious accent mark after the first t. It threw me off a lit-tle, but still I had a good head start.

I'm sure, at this early time in the century, there was no great emphasis by governmental or educational associations on parents reading to their children in order to make them better readers as there is today. Mama just did it naturally for her own entertainment and for her listeners.

We subscribed to the magazine, Comfort. It contained the Thornton Burgess little animal stories. I could hardly wait for the next issue to come so that Mama could read another such story as Old Granny Fox, Jerry Muskrat or Sammy~~~ Jay. In addition there were adult continuing stories. Mama read these aloud too, primarily for Grandma's benefit whose eyesight was failing. I listened to these stories as avidly as I did to Bowser the Hound or Reddy Fox. There was one I shall never forget, The Unseeing Eye. It was my first exposure to mystery stories. Such listened-to reading acquainted me, by some peculiar literary process of osmosis, with plot, characterization and climax, all unintentional and all with profound una~wareness on anyone's part.

When Mama began to read ~"Evangeline" to us, the reading always being done after supper, chores and homework, the words fell from her lips, again unintentionally, like some beautiful but somber notes of music. "This is the fore~~st primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss . . . indistinct in the twilight . . .voices sad and prophetic . . . the deep-voiced neighboring ocean . . . answers the wail of the forest . .

It seemed that the lamps in this enchanted kitchen suddenly burned lower, the fireplace light dimmed and the teakettle on the back of the stove sighed softly. Something bittersweet was going to come about before this poem was over, which took several evenings of reading.

~Mama would pause often to see if there were any questions. There were, but we seldom interrupted. Once I ventured, "Let me see that word, murmuring." Mama showed it to me. It even looked like it sounded. We pronounced it slowly together which precluded any explanation of what it meant. It made me think of the river where it "murmured" over the rocks between the bi~g and little bluffs. Primeval, ~Druids, disconsolate, prophetic could go by the way to be attended to later. I had picked out my glimmering emerald jewel, murmuring. It was sweet and sad, yet comforting.

As Mama continued I also, without any scholastic lesson, imbibed cadence and rhythm, adding them, unconsciously, to my sense of mood, plot, characterization and clima~x. In later life when these concepts were presented to me scholasticly, how was it I already seemed to know about them?

If this account seems self-serving and goody-goody, let me say that when Mama opened the beautifully bound, Lord B~yron's Poems and read from the very first page a poem entitled, "To E_______," all of us were as puzzled as one of Grandpa's hounds who had lost the trail.

And when Mama caught Lou and me thumbing through that gloomy, darkly illustrated book, "Night Scenes from the Bible" and identifying pictures as, "That's Nick with Jesus," "~Here's Pete, Jim and Johnny asleep in the Garden," she, flashy-eyed and tight-lipped took it from our hands and put us to bed without even a teaspoonful of camomile tea!

REJOICE!